The legacy of a Civil War veteran still lives on to this day in Belle Plaine.

Ernst Boessling moved to Minnesota from Germany with his mother, Sophie, and father, Christian.

At 15, Boessling enlisted at Fort Snelling with a note signed by his parents saying he was 18 and giving him permission to serve in the Army.

“The mystery is he may have written that note himself, but we’ll have no way of knowing that,” Rick Krant, with the Lutheran Home Association, said.

While fighting in the Siege of Vicksburg, Boessling became sick and died a few days later. Sophie and Christian lost their only child at the age of 17. After his death, Sophie decided to keep her son’s memory alive and created a lasting legacy that lives on to this day.

“It really memorialized him and her as well,” Krant said.

Using the government death benefit after her son died in the war, Sophie donated money and land from the family farm to the Lutheran church for a home for senior citizens and orphaned children in Belle Plaine. Today, the facility is known as the Lutheran Home Association.

“We’re the largest employer in this community,” Krant said. “The accomplishment of fulfilling what Sophie’s dream was.”